


Patchwork

by tinsnip



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, Morality, Vignette, pretense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 03:32:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinsnip/pseuds/tinsnip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He sits at his desk in his warm office, brightly lit, his books around him. The scent of perek flowers, stems fresh-cut, drifts through the air. It’s quiet.<br/>He’s fortunate to have this office, so comforting, so well fitted to his needs. He’s grateful for that. It restores him to have a restful place to hide from the rest of the worlds, to steal a moment for himself.<br/>It is, after all, such a tiring business, pretending."</p><p>They say absolute power corrupts absolutely. Elim Garak is rather of the opinion that this is the only thing he doesn't have to worry about...</p><p>Just a vignette, set post-<span class="u">The Crimson Shadow</span> by Una McCormack. There are mild spoilers for this book in this fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patchwork

**Author's Note:**

> The song lyrics are from ["Am I The Only One"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBOImf2xkAY) by the Barenaked Ladies, available for purchase [here](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/maybe-you-should-drive/id296192669), and I think that song's going to get recycled into another fic someday. Lots of potential there. Melancholy and thoughtful and stuck in my head, and so...
> 
> The so'c is a Cardassian sense-organ beneath the tongue, which permits them to taste the air much as a snake does. The concept originated with [bmouse](http://www.bmouse.tumblr.com) and I thank her for it.

_and who_  
 _who do you think i am?_  
 _and who_  
 _who do you think i'll be without you?_

* * *

He sits at his desk in his warm office, brightly lit, his books around him. The scent of perek flowers, stems fresh-cut, drifts through the air. It’s quiet.

He’s fortunate to have this office, so comforting, so well fitted to his needs. He’s grateful for that. It restores him to have a restful place to hide from the rest of the worlds, to steal a moment for himself.

It is, after all, such a tiring business, pretending.

Not that he’s not good at it. Not that he’s not _practiced_ at it. He’s been doing it his whole life.

Today, as every day, the people need him to make decisions. There is anger here, and the people demand answers. There is hunger there, and the people demand food. There is rebirth here, and the people demand celebration. There is anguish there, and the people demand vengeance. And all of it, all of it falls to Elim Garak to distribute. He is the arbiter of who deserves what, of how things should be balanced in this brave new Cardassia. His people have decided that, among all of them, he is the one who is most fit to decide their path.

Is it funny? He thinks for a moment. Yes. Yes, it is.

_They have no idea who they’ve chosen._

Really, he has no idea who they’ve chosen, either.

There is an empty place inside of him. There always has been, for as long as he can remember. It’s hollow, it’s resonant, and anything that penetrates to that place within him is soon twisted beyond recognition by its distorted echoes.

Some people speak of having a _moral core:_ a strength within them that holds them up, that does not permit them to lose their way in the maze of life’s myriad choices. He’s always wondered what that might be like. Restricting, he thinks. But also… perhaps comforting, sometimes? To know which way to go without really having to think very much about it? It sounds restful.

He’ll never know, not really. His core is his emptiness, and it tells him nothing true. He’s comfortable with that, and he is not frightened when its echoes sing to him in the dark.

At least, he is not frightened for himself… but now there are others, so many others, all of them expecting him to keep their feet on the right path. They need him to be strong, to point the way.

That thought frightens him. How can they not realize that he is hollow?

He dispatches a communique, signs off on an agreement, approves the movement of troops on a far-away world.

Well… perhaps not _him,_ exactly…

From time to time in his life, he has found ways to fill the void inside him, to quiet its echoes to nothing. He’s managed it, mostly, by observing people, which is something he’s rather good at. He watches the way the ones he admires fit themselves to the world, how they react to the choices they’re offered, and from that watching he grows morality, grafts it into himself. With daily reinforcement, soon the graft almost begins to feel like a part of him, something strong.

Eventually, though, the people he admires leave, or are left, and soon the graft weakens, wilts. When it shrivels to nothing, the space it leaves behind is filled with echoes. As always, they soon distort, and he’s empty again. It’s sad, but it’s a vague, irrelevant sadness. There is no sense in mourning the return of normalcy; besides it’s certainly easier to be empty. Being filled with morality makes him feel bloated, weighty; his movements are slowed, his edge is blunted, and so many choices are made for him before he can even truly consider them. It’s such an endless natter in his head, a constant refrain of _no, no, Julian wouldn_ _’t, Ziyal wouldn’t, Kelas wouldn’t._

It’s so _constricting._

But also… comforting.

If he’s leashed, if he’s held back, restricted to a certain set of acceptable choices… well, then, he won’t hurt anyone, will he? Not unnecessarily, anyway. Not without public approval, and that has to be a kind of restriction, doesn’t it? Watching eyes, censorious mouths, the hands that wait to topple him down…

 But the public are so very easily swayed, aren’t they… when it comes down to it, he can charm them as well as he can charm anyone else he’s ever met. So very few are immune to his charm, and when majority rules, those few are soon silenced. And so if the public approves of him, he can do no wrong, can he? He knows very well that public approval is what dictates all morality, in the end. He only has to think of Tain or of Dukat to know the truth of that.

_I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore. I simply want to make things better._

That’s true. Is that true? It’s all echoes within him, sounds that twist…

And what is ‘better,’ exactly? Is it better for Elim Garak? Is it better for Kelas Parmak? Is it better for North Torr, or the freezing hills of Hannarad, or the client worlds that clamour for trade, or the Federation that watches them all, waiting?

It’s so hard to tell. It shifts from day to day.

He has such lofty ambitions for his people. He wants to lift them up beyond what they’ve been.

 _My intention is to remake the Cardassian soul,_ he’d said to Kelas, and Kelas had laughed at him.

It does seem like something of a fool’s errand… but truly, he believes himself eminently fitted for the job. Just as it requires the assessing, distanced eye of a tailor to shape the clothing to the body of the wearer, so too it requires someone set apart to reshape the morality of the Cardassian people. He’s untroubled by morality, and so nothing inhibits him from making the sweeping cuts, the drastic changes that are needed to create a well-made whole. Who can repair a soul but the man who does not have one?

But those around him, who count on him… he has to care for their souls, doesn’t he? He can’t be ruthless. He must be kind. He cannot be his father’s son.

And so every day he falls back on those who were close to him once, who are still with him now; he wears their mindsets like a mask. He relies on what he knows, what he remembers, what he _thinks_ he remembers. Kelas’s kindness, Julian’s forgiveness, Ziyal’s compass and clear direction… they weight him, they slow him down, they keep his movements measured. He wraps himself in the straitjacket of their moralities, trusting them to restrain him, to hold him upright.

It’s sluggish and slow, it’s exhausting and essential, because if he does not remember to be Julian, to be Ziyal, to be Kelas…

Well, one day he will be Elim, won’t he? He’ll be the one the people chose, all unknowing, and all they’ll have to guide them will be an empty space, a sound of echoes fading.

He closes his eyes, sips the air, tastes perek on his so’c.

_Julian. Ziyal. Dearest Kelas. Forgive me. Absolve me. For what I do, I do in your name._

It is, perhaps, somewhat vain to think it will be worthy of them.


End file.
